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Europe
|area = (6th) |population = ( ; 3rd) |density = 72.9/km2 (188/sq mi) (2nd) |GDP_nominal = $21.79 trillion (2019; 3rd) |GDP_PPP = $29.01 trillion (2019; 2nd) |GDP_per_capita = $29,410 (2019; 3rd) |HDI = 0.845 |demonym = European |countries = 50 sovereign states 6 with limited recognition |dependencies = 6 dependencies |languages = Most common first languages: |time = UTC−1 to UTC+5 |internet = |cities = Largest urban areas: |Moscow |Paris |London |Madrid | Barcelona |Saint Petersburg |Rome |Berlin |Milan }} |footnotes = Figures include only European portions of transcontinental countries. |b. Istanbul is a transcontinental city with about two-thirds of the population residing in the European side. |c. As defined by the International Monetary Fund.}} }} Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Asia to the east, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe ... is formed by the Ural Mountains, Ural River, Caspian Sea, Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea with its outlets, the Bosporus and Dardanelles." Although the term "continent" implies physical geography, the land border is somewhat arbitrary and has been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity. The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East-West cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border between Europe and Asia does not follow any state boundaries: Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan are transcontinental countries. France, Portugal, Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom are also transcontinental in that the main portion is in Europe while pockets of their territory are located in other continents. Europe covers about , or 2% of the Earth's surface (6.8% of land area). Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 741 million (about 11% of the world population) |lc=y}}. The European climate is largely affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent, even at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast. Europe, in particular ancient Greece and ancient Rome, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of ancient history and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art and science led to the modern era. Since the Age of Discovery started by Portugal and Spain, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at various times the Americas, almost all of Africa and Oceania and the majority of Asia. The Age of Enlightenment, the subsequent French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally, politically and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic, cultural and social change in Western Europe and eventually the wider world. Both world wars took place for the most part in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence.National Geographic, 534. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill, with the idea of unifying Europe to achieve common goals. It includes all European states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union (EU), a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation. The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The currency of most countries of the European Union, the euro, is the most commonly used among Europeans; and the EU's Schengen Area abolishes border and immigration controls between most of its member states. Name , in Valletta, Malta]] ' world map (450 BC)]] In classical Greek mythology, Europa ( , Eurṓpē) was a Phoenician princess. The word Europe is derived from her name. The name contains the elements εὐρύς (eurús), "wide, broad"εὐρύς, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus. and ὤψ (ōps, gen. ὠπός, ōpós) "eye, face, countenance",ὤψ, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus. hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean "wide-gazing" or "broad of aspect". Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a Semitic term for "west", this being either Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set" (said of the sun) or Phoenician '' 'ereb'' "evening, west","Europe" in the Online Etymology Dictionary. which is at the origin of Arabic Maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav. Michael A. Barry, professor in Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department, finds the mention of the word Ereb on an Assyrian stele with the meaning of "night, country of sunset", in opposition to Asu "country of sunrise", i.e. Asia. The same naming motive according to "cartographic convention" appears in Greek Ἀνατολή (Anatolḗ "sun rise", "east", hence Anatolia).Michael A. Barry: "L'Europe et son mythe : à la poursuite du couchant". In: Revue des deux Mondes (November/December 1999) p. 110. . Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor." . Next to these hypotheses there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning "darkness", which also produced Greek Erebus. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu (歐洲/欧洲); a similar Chinese-derived term is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, , despite the katakana being more commonly used. In some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan ("land of the Franks") is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa. Definition Contemporary definition Clickable map of Europe, showing one of the most commonly used continental boundariesThe map shows one of the most commonly accepted delineations of the geographical boundaries of Europe, as used by National Geographic and Encyclopædia Britannica. Whether countries are considered in Europe or Asia can vary in sources, for example in the classification of the CIA World Factbook or that of the BBC. Note also that certain countries in Europe, such as France, have territories lying geographically outside Europe, but which are nevertheless considered integral parts of that country. Key: blue: states which straddle the border between Europe and Asia; green: countries not geographically in Europe, but closely associated with the continent The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the far east are usually taken to be the Urals, the Ural River, and the Caspian Sea; to the southeast, including the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is generally considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is usually considered part of Europe politically. It is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island of Northwest Africa for centuries.Falconer, William; Falconer, Thomas. [https://books.google.com/books?id=B3Q29kWRdtgC&pg=PA50 Dissertation on St. Paul's Voyage], BiblioLife (BiblioBazaar), 1872. (1817.), p. 50, These islands Pliny, as well as Strabo and Ptolemy, included in the African sea "Europe" as used specifically in British English may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively. History of the concept Early history printed by Günther Zainer in 1472, showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah — Asia to Sem (Shem), Europe to Iafeth (Japheth), and Africa to Cham (Ham)]] The first recorded usage of Eurṓpē as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, in reference to the western shore of the Aegean Sea. As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BC by Anaximander and Hecataeus. Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni River) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BC.Histories 4.38. C.f. James Rennell, The geographical system of Herodotus examined and explained, Volume 1, Rivington 1830, p. 244 Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa), with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don, rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia.Herodotus, 4:45 Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don.Strabo Geography 11.1 The Book of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, separating it from Northwest Africa, to the Don, separating it from Asia. The convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman era authors such as Posidonius,W. Theiler, Posidonios. Die Fragmente, vol. 1. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982, fragm. 47a. StraboI. G. Kidd (ed.), Posidonius: The commentary, Cambridge University Press, 2004, , p. 738. and Ptolemy,Geographia 7.5.6 (ed. Nobbe 1845, vol. 2, p. 178) "And Asia is connected to Europe by the land-strait between Lake Maiotis and the Sarmatian Ocean where the river Tanais crosses through." who took the Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary. The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church, as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world. A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam, and limited to northern Iberia, the British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy.Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, 1993, ""Culture and Society in the First Europe", pp185ff. The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance: Europa often figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin.Noted by Cantor, 1993:181. Modern definitions The question of defining a precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period, as the eastern extension of Muscovy began to include Northern Asia. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 18th century, the traditional division of the landmass of Eurasia into two continents, Europe and Asia, followed Ptolemy, with the boundary following the Turkish Straits, the Black Sea, the Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and the Don (ancient Tanais). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers. '' ('Queen Europe') in 1582.|alt=|270x270px]] Philip Johan von Strahlenberg in 1725 was the first to depart from the classical Don boundary by proposing that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents whenever there were no suitable waterways. He drew a new line along the Volga, following the Volga north until the Samara Bend, along Obshchy Syrt (the drainage divide between Volga and Ural) and then north along Ural Mountains. This was adopted by the Russian Empire, and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted, but not without criticism by many modern analytical geographers. The mapmakers continued to differ on the boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. The 1745 atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk, while other 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg's prescription. To the south, the Kuma–Manych Depression was identified circa 1773 by a German naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas, as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, Peter Simon Pallas, Journey through various provinces of the Russian Empire, vol. 3 (1773) and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents. By the mid-19th century, there were three main conventions, one following the Don, the Volga–Don Canal and the Volga, the other following the Kuma–Manych Depression to the Caspian and then the Ural River, and the third abandoning the Don altogether, following the Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The question was still treated as a "controversy" in geographical literature of the 1860s, with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the "best possible", citing support from various "modern geographers".Douglas W. Freshfield, "Journey in the Caucasus", Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Volumes 13–14, 1869. Cited as de facto convention by Baron von Haxthausen, Transcaucasia (1854); review Dublin University Magazine In Russia and the Soviet Union, the boundary along the Kuma–Manych Depression was the most commonly used as early as 1906."Europe" , Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1906 In 1958, the Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks from Baydaratskaya Bay, on the Kara Sea, along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains, then following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills, and then the Emba River; and Kuma–Manych Depression, thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe. However, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crestE.M. Moores, R.W. Fairbridge, Encyclopedia of European and Asian regional geology, Springer, 1997, , p. 34: "most Soviet geographers took the watershed of the Main Range of the Greater Caucasus as the boundary between Europe and Asia." and this became the common convention in the later 20th century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps. History Prehistory in France (c 15,000 BC)]] Homo erectus georgicus, which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia, is the earliest hominid to have been discovered in Europe. Other hominid remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca, Spain.The million year old tooth from Atapuerca, Spain, found in June 2007 Neanderthal man (named after the Neandertal valley in Germany) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago (115,000 years ago it is found already in Polandhttp://cnn.it/2yDM2Lx) and disappeared from the fossil record about 28,000 years ago, with their final refuge being present-day Portugal. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans (Cro-Magnons), who appeared in Europe around 43,000 to 40,000 years ago.National Geographic, 21. The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago are Riparo Mochi (Italy), Geissenklösterle (Germany), and Isturitz (France) 42.7–41.5 ka (1σ CI). Katerina Douka et al., A new chronostratigraphic framework for the Upper Palaeolithic of Riparo Mochi (Italy), Journal of Human Evolution 62(2), 19 December 2011, 286–299, . in the United Kingdom (Late Neolithic from 3000–2000 BC).]] The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and the widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BC in Greece and the Balkans, probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East. It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine (Linear Pottery culture) and along the Mediterranean coast (Cardial culture). Between 4500 and 3000 BC, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to the west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds and megalithic tombs. The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic. During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as the Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge, were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe.Atkinson, R.J.C., Stonehenge (Penguin Books, 1956) The European Bronze Age began c. 3200 BC in Greece with the Minoan civilization on Crete, the first advanced civilization in Europe. The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans, who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BC, ushering the European Iron Age. Iron Age colonisation by the Greeks and Phoenicians gave rise to early Mediterranean cities. Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BC gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity, whose beginning is sometimes dated to 776 BC, the year the first Olympic Games. Classical antiquity in Athens (432 BC)]] Ancient Greece was the founding culture of Western civilisation. Western democratic and rationalist culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece. The Greeks city-state, the polis, was the fundamental political unit of classical Greece. In 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens. The Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists. Greece also generated many cultural contributions: in philosophy, humanism and rationalism under Aristotle, Socrates and Plato; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with the epic poems of Homer;National Geographic, 76. in drama with Sophocles and Euripides, in medicine with Hippocrates and Galen; and in science with Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes. Pedersen, Olaf. Early Physics and Astronomy: A Historical Introduction. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. In the course of the 5th century BC, several of the Greek city states would ultimately check the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars, considered a pivotal moment in world history, as the 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens, the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilization. was a small city-state on the Italian Peninsula. By 200 BC, Rome had conquered Italy, and over the following two centuries it conquered Greece and Hispania (Spain and Portugal), the North African coast, much of the Middle East, Gaul (France and Belgium), and Britannia (England and Wales).]] Greece was followed by Rome, which left its mark on law, politics, language, engineering, architecture, government and many more key aspects in western civilisation. Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the 3rd century BC, the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean Basin and Western Europe by the turn of the millennium. The Roman Republic ended in 27 BC, when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire. The two centuries that followed are known as the pax romana, a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity, and political stability in most of Europe. The Romans were tempted to cross the long land frontiers of their provinces in Western and Southern Europe and to press further into Asia from their provinces in the eastern Mediterranean. They also traversed the English Channel to occupy much of Great Britain. Although the Roman legions were a formidable ﬁghting force, the campaigns that they were engaged in were far from supplying the empire with an unbroken string of successes. The battles they fought often revealed their vulnerability when faced with enemies employing very different tactics on what was to the Romans alien terrain. An early reminder of the limits of Roman power was provided by a defeat at the hands of the Germanic tribes led by Arminius, a Chieftain of the Cherusci, who lived in the area of present-day Hanover. Arminius was commanding a body of auxiliaries ﬁghting for the Romans, while secretly forming a tribal alliance to oppose them. At the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, three legions under Publius Quinctilius Varus were ambushed by Arminius' forces and massacred. The Romans had their revenge through punitive expeditions led by Germanicus between 14 and 16 CE, but the tribes across the Rhine were never subdued as the Gauls had been. In 43 AD, Emperor Claudius ordered four Roman legions to invade Britain, and they defeated the Catuvellauni and created a new province. The Romans steadily expanded northward after defeating the Iceni revolt, and Gnaeus Julius Agricola expanded Roman rule as far as Caledonia by 84 AD. The forty-year Roman conquest of Britain left 250,000 Britons dead, and emperor Hadrian built a wall to defend the province from the Caledonians. The empire continued to expand under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, who spent time on the Empire's northern border fighting Germanic, Pictish and Scottish tribes.National Geographic, 123.Foster, Sally M., Picts, Gaels, and Scots: Early Historic Scotland. Batsford, London, 2004. Christianity was legalised by Constantine I in 313 AD after three centuries of imperial persecution. Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour (modern-day Istanbul) in 330 AD. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 AD, and in 391–392 AD, the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions. This is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD; the closure of the pagan Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 AD; or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century AD. See also * Renaissance * Age of Discovery * Modernity * Age of Enlightenment ;Politics * Eurodistrict * Euroregion * Flags of Europe * List of sovereign states by date of formation * Names of European cities in different languages * OSCE countries statistics * European Union as a potential superpower ;Demographics * Area and population of European countries * European Union statistics * Largest cities of the EU * Largest urban areas of the European Union * List of cities in Europe * List of metropolitan areas in Europe * List of villages in Europe * Pan-European identity ;Economics * Economy of the European Union * Financial and social rankings of European countries * Healthcare in Europe * Telecommunications in Europe * List of European television stations * List of European countries by GDP (nominal) References Sources * National Geographic Society (2005). National Geographic Visual History of the World. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society. . * * External links * Council of Europe * European Union * The Columbia Gazetteer of the World Online Columbia University Press * "Introducing Europe" from Lonely Planet Travel Guides and Information Historical Maps * Borders in Europe 3000BC to the present Geacron Historical atlas * Online history of Europe in 21 maps Category:Europe Category:Continents